Challenging culture that’s ‘not that bad’
Managing risks often involve taking them, especially where culture is concerned. Challenging the ‘way we do it here’ in any organisation takes courage, stamina and involves career and/or personal risk. It is not an easy path to take. Taking on societal norms only magnifies these risks.
The Gillette short film We Believe: The Best Men Can Be is an interesting case in point. As at 8 February 2019, this video had 28.7m views, 758,000 likes and 1.3m dislikes.
What did Gillette do? Posted a video suggesting that men can and do engage in toxic masculinity and could and should choose not to. That the behaviour (too many) men take for granted is inappropriate, sexist, unwelcome and/or abusive.
The great majority of (male) comments posted were negative to Gillette, many stating they were going to boycott Gillette and other Proctor & Gamble products. Much of the dislike seemed to be about a company daring to tell its consumers that they may have to self reflect in a deeper way than they do in front of a mirror, and Gillette defaming all men in this way (the #notallmen defence).
There seems little evidence of responses actually condoning such behaviour, although British commentator Piers Morgan tweeted: I've used @Gillette razors my entire adult life but this absurd virtue-signalling PC guff may drive me away to a company less eager to fuel the current pathetic global assault on masculinity. Let boys be damn boys. Let men be damn men.
The #notallmen / ‘global assault on masculinity’ response is not surprising. First, because it is the inevitable catch-cry to shut down debate or invalidate a lived experience – to challenge and defend rather than to understand. Secondly, it reflects the nature of advertising itself – each year billions of dollars are spent worldwide on highlighting the virtues of particular products and behaviours, in particular suggesting that such things are within the reach of all of us. So a message about toxic masculinity may indeed be construed similarly.
Am I offended? No. As a father of two girls and step-father to another two, I agree with both the message and Gillette’s right to say it. I don’t take offence just because I am a man and because the film focuses on particular male behaviour. Neither am I concerned about why Gillette made the film and whether it is part of their values or about increasing their company’s monetary value.[1]
As a member of society, I support (and hopefully mostly practise) appropriate and overlapping behaviours of equality, empathy, inclusiveness and respect. When I inevitably don’t quite get there, I try to acknowledge it and learn from it.
Should we expect no less in our workplaces or in society?
However, the reality is that messages like the Gillette film are necessary – we need them now and we need them for the future world our children grow up in. Why? Because I am concerned about toxic masculinity and sexism. Because I expect that my girls (and many other women and men) will experience it and have to deal with it.
Why do I think this? Because unfortunately, the data suggests this is the case.
The 2018 report by the Australian Human Rights Commission (Everyone’s business: Fourth national survey on sexual harassment in Australian workplaces) based on a survey of over 10,000 people highlighted the following.
That overall:
71% of Australians have been sexually harassed at some point in their lifetimes.
More than 85% of Australian women and 56% of Australian men over the age of 15 have been sexually harassed at some point in their lifetimes.
The most common forms of sexual harassment experienced were: offensive sexually suggestive comments or jokes: two thirds of (59%) women and one quarter (26%) of men; inappropriate physical contact: just over half of women (54%) and one quarter (23%) of men, and unwelcome touching, hugging, cornering or kissing: just over half of women (51%) and one in five (21%) men.
Almost one quarter (23%) of women have experienced actual or attempted rape or sexual assault at some point in their lifetimes and nearly one third (31%) of women have experienced unwelcome requests or pressure for sex or other sexual acts.
More specifically, in Australian workplaces:
There is a high rate of sexual harassment in Australian workplaces, with one in three people (33%) having experienced sexual harassment at work in the last five years. Women were more likely to be sexually harassed in the workplace than men.
In the last 12 months, 23% of women in the Australian workforce have experienced some form of workplace sexual harassment compared with 16% of men in the workforce.
The majority of workplace sexual harassment (79%) was perpetrated by men. Harassers were most often a co-worker employed at the same level as the victim and in the majority of cases, had sexually harassed others in the same workplace in a similar manner.
In a large number of workplace sexual harassment cases, the harassment was ongoing over an extended period. In addition, a substantial proportion of people who were sexually harassed experienced negative consequences as a result, such as impacts on mental health or stress.
A substantial proportion (40%) of workplace sexual harassment incidents were witnessed by at least one other person, and in the majority of cases (69%) the witness did not try to intervene.
The report also considers the extent to which such culture was witnessed and reported, noting that:
One in five people who were sexually harassed at work said the behaviour was common (20%) in their workplace.
Two in five people (41%) said they were aware of someone else in their workplace who had also been sexually harassed in the same way as them.
The majority of people who were sexually harassed at work did not formally report their experience or seek support or advice, with many victims believing a formal complaint would be viewed as an overreaction or that it was easier to stay quiet.
Fewer than one in five people (17%) made a formal report or complaint in relation to workplace sexual harassment. Almost one in five people who made a formal report or complaint were labelled as a troublemaker (19%), were ostracised, victimised or ignored by colleagues (18%) or resigned (17%).
In one in five cases (19%) the formal report or complaint brought no consequences for the perpetrator. The most common outcome of reports or complaints was a formal warning to the perpetrator (30% of cases). Almost half (45%) of people who made a formal report said that no changes occurred at their organisation as a result of the complaint. This was more likely to be the case for complaints lodged by women (55%) than for complaints lodged by men (31%). The most common reasons for not reporting workplace sexual harassment were that people would think it was an over-reaction (49%) and it was easier to keep quiet (45%).
Although more than one third of people witnessed or heard about the sexual harassment of someone else in their workplace, only one in three bystanders took action to intervene.
This is sobering reading - these are Australian workplaces right now..
It doesnt get any better at universities. The 2017 report by the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) Change the Course – National report on sexual assault and sexual harassment at Australian universities found that:
51% of university students were sexually harassed on at least one occasion in 2016. Women were almost twice as likely as men to have been sexually harassed in a university setting in 2016
Overall, 6.9% of students were sexually assaulted on at least one occasion in 2015 or 2016, with 1.6% reporting that the sexual assault occurred in a university setting.
Women (10%) were more than three times as likely as men (2.9%) to have been sexually assaulted in 2015 or 2016. Women were also more likely than men to have been sexually assaulted in a university setting in 2015 or 2016 (2.3% compared with 0.7% for men).
The majority of perpetrators of most recent incidents of sexual assault or sexual harassment in a university setting were male, and in approximately half of these incidents, were known to the victim.
Let’s now look beyond Australia.
A recent ABC news report noted that an online survey (carried out by Deloitte in November 2018) and completed by 30,364 people from the United Nations and its agencies highlighted the following:
21.7 per cent of respondents said they were subjected to sexual stories or offensive jokes, 14.2 per cent received offensive remarks about their appearance, body or sexual activities and 13 per cent were targeted by unwelcome attempts to draw them into a discussion on sexual matters.
About 10.9 per cent said they were subjected to gestures or use of body language of a sexual nature, which embarrassed or offended them, and 10.1 per cent were touched in a way that made them feel uncomfortable.
More than half of those who experienced sexual harassment said it happened in an office environment, while 17.1 per cent said it happened at a work-related social event.
Two out of three harassers were male.
Only one in three people said they took action after experiencing sexual harassment.
While these are anonymous surveys, they are significant indicators of inappropriate cultural behaviour that can have devastating personal (and organisational) consequences. And not surprisingly, for the reasons mentioned above, there exists a real and palpable fear of reporting and dealing with this behaviour.
There are however those who are bravely willing enough to openly share their stories to bring such behaviour out into the open. Just one example is the book Not That Bad – dispatches from Rape Culture (2018) which is a collection of true stories from individuals (men and women) impacted by abuse, sexual violence and rape culture. It is not an easy read..
The book is edited by Roxanne Gay, who, like most of the other contributors, suffered life changing violence but tried to hide or minimise its effect:
Allowing myself to believe that being gang-raped wasn’t ‘that bad’ allowed me to break down my trauma into something more manageable, into something I could carry with me instead of allowing the magnitude of it to destroy me.
But, in the long run, diminishing my experience hurt me far more than it helped. I created an unrealistic measure for what was acceptable in how I was treated in relationships, in friendships, in random encounters with strangers. That is to say that if I even had a bar for how I deserved to be treated, that bar was so low it was buried far below ground.
And so it is with our day to day choices of what we are prepared to live with, minimise of challenge, in our workplaces and in our daily lives.
The Gillette film confronts an issue that needs to be acknowledged, that is experienced by many people, mostly women, every day. It doesnt matter that #notallmen do it. What matters is that the film questions an uncomfortable culture and asks men to find another way – to listen, observe, understand and empathise – and above all, change their own toxic behaviours or call out the behaviour of others that is too often minimised as 'not that bad'.
Isnt that the least a man should be…
[1] Comparisons could also be made with Nike’s decision to publicly support Colin Kaepernick’s decision to kneel during the American national anthem at the start of an NFL game to protest injustice and police brutality. For an interesting article about Nike’s history of sponsoring controversial athletes, read this.